Educating children who’ve been abused, abandoned; former headmaster of Yemin Orde tells his experiences

By Donald H. Harrison

LA JOLLA, California—Chaim Peri spent nearly three decades as the headmaster of a unique residential and educational complex near Haifa, Israel, known as Yemin Orde.  Typically, 500 students live and go to school there, with 150 graduating each year.  The high school was located a five-minute walk from the residential village where the children live, because educators there don’t want the students to feel that they are living in an institution.  Rather, they want them to think of Yemin Orde as their home—a place where they can always come back.

And many of the alumni did just that last December when fires approached the campus located on Carmel Mountain.  They dodged police and fire cordons to get there, explaining that it was their homes that were being threatened and that they wanted to help, Peri recalled during a brief visit to San Diego earlier this month.

What makes the Yemin Orde campus stand out is that its residents are students who previously were abandoned, orphaned, or abused prior to their immigration to Israel.  They are children like those at San Pasqual Academy in Escondido — which Peri visited during his local stopover—to whom life has dealt a tough hand.  They need love, mentoring, and a sense of belonging, which Peri, now head of the offshoot Yemin Orde Initiative,  and his former teaching colleagues on the campus try to provide through some novel educational concepts.

Over a glass of tea at Elijah’s in La Jolla  (Peri refrained from eating because the Jewish-style deli is not kosher), the former headmaster said he was visiting Southern California both to spread the tale of how to “deinstitutionalize (educational) institutions” and to seek donations for the $9 million rebuilding program of the Yemin Orde campus in the wake of the December fire.  He said approximately 43 percent of the residential portion of the campus was destroyed, with students now living in pre-fabricated housing units known in Israel as “caravans.”   Additionally the campus’s library was destroyed.  Luckily, there were no casualties because it took two days before the devastating fire reached the campus and there was sufficient time to evacuate to a temporary facility in Hadera.

Persuading students that Yemin Orde is a home and not another boarding school is key to helping them to a successful life beyond graduation, Peri said. He explained that children who have been abandoned or abused tend to hang onto the lessons of their misfortunes, and are distrustful and suspicious of other people until it can be proven to them that they will not be abandoned or abused again.   Having a village where the students live away from the school gives them a sense that they have both a home where they belong, as well as a place to learn, he explained.

Furthermore, he said, the youth residents, in a carefully programmed way, are helped to find pride in their identities.   If a father was an abuser, then perhaps the grandfather or an ancestor is someone whose genealogy a student may take pride in sharing.  Most of them having immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, or Latin America, the student residents are taught to take pride in being part of the Jewish people, who live in Israel, a land chosen for them by God.

While many faculty and administrators at Yemin Orde wear kippot and self-identify as Orthodox, they differ from the haredim who believe in separating themselves from the rest of Israeli society and from West Bank settlers, whose nationalistic ideology often puts them at odds with Arabs and other Muslims.

Peri said that Yemin Orde reaches out to immigrants such as those from the former Soviet Union, and the Falash Mura from Ethiopia, whose Jewish identities are challenged by the Orthodox establishment.  In addition to secular studies, the school teaches about Judaism , preparing the students for conversions.

At the same time, Yemin Orde does not confine itself to Israeli educational models.  Peri said he spent quite a bit of time in Ethiopia learning that country’s culture and educational systems.  For students who come from Ethiopia’s rural areas, he said, Yemin Orde developed a program for teaching mathematics that deals with time allocation and production quotas that a traditional family raising cattle would readily understand. How well has it worked?  Ethiopian students from Yemin Orde have won national mathematics competitions and now compete in Israel’s behalf in international contests, he said.

The school has provided some places to Muslim refugees from Darfur, Sudan – Peri explaining that he can think of no more poignant example of Jews taking to heart the lesson they recite at Passover seders, that they too once were a people oppressed on the African continent.

Peri said Yemin Orde defines “success” not so much in terms of academics—as in how many students will go on to university –but rather in what percentage of the students will overcome their tough childhoods and go on to become productive, contributing members of Israeli society.

Yemin Orde is named for British army officer Wingate Orde, a Christian Zionist who helped to train the Palmach prior to Israel’s War of Independence.  A special connection for the Ethiopian students is that prior to that assignment, Orde helped Ethiopians resist fascist forces sent to occupy their land by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Peri was accompanied on his Southern California tour by Jackie Louk, regional director for the Western States of the Friends of Yemin Orde.  She may be contacted at jackie@yeminorde.org

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com